Verisign signs transliteration TLD contracts, discusses the state of .com.

There was a lot of interesting information in yesterday’s Verisign quarterly investor conference call.

First, the company said it signed 11 contracts for its IDN transliterations of .com and .net, meaning that investors of IDN.com domain names might be close to getting their hands on IDN.com-as-IDN domains.

I say might because Verisign isn’t willing to put a date on it and hinted that the end is not near. The company said it’s asking for a modified sunrise period (reserving for matching brands in .com) and this could take a while if they get pushback.

Interestingly, Verisign CEO James Bidzos, discussing how these transliterations will be marketed, said “We’ll simply be notifying existing registrant brands that the transliteration of their .com registration is available to them.” Click to continue reading…

They could be forced to buy transliterations within a limited time period.

Verisign has been negotiating its contracts for transliterations of .com for a long time, and last week we got an idea about what the hold up is.

ICM Registry, the domain registry for .xxx and the forthcoming .adult, .porn and .sex top level domains, announced that it finally inked contracts with ICANN for new TLDs. The catch is that ICM had to change how it handled its Domain Matching program.

ICM wanted to reserve second level domain names that match existing .xxx domain names, and then offer the reserved names to the .xxx owner if (and whenever) they decide they want the new domains. The idea is similar to what .UK is doing for owners of third level .uk domains. In that case, third level owners have five years to claim their second level domains.

Clever video series promotes registering a domain name as the first step in a business idea.

Verisign released a couple videos today as part of its “Make your Idea Official” campaign. The videos remind me a bit of more recent humorous ads from GoDaddy. Although the videos promote .com and .net, they’re good overall for promoting domain name registration.